Each artist has certain currents—underground rivers, let’s imagine—they are attuned to, nourished by or responding to, in communion with. And I think we are each trying to speak in that true/inner/hidden language to others and to the world.
I became very interested in how . . . linguistic dynamics played out, and how they related to power, and who had dominance in any given discourse.
Two Thieves: Debut Authors on Self-Plagiarism, Theft, and Sample
What drives us to steal? To become a thief? To get the things we want—physical objects, words, ideas—by taking them?
Magic, magical realism, or magical thinking are the ultimate expression of powerlessness, but they are also holders of the possibility of a better, more just, world.
One of the great potentials of science fiction is its ability to relativize our own experience, to put it in different contexts.
It sort of seems old-fashioned now, but I consider myself a social realist. I like to work on big canvases. I like books that take on the whole world.
Forever—a terrifying idea in many regards. It’s not proper to earthly creatures.
I felt a kindred experience in Isabel Allende while writing here in the United States but thinking about Venezuela and dealing with all these feelings about being apart from it . . . guilt, love, nostalgia for my home country that I knew I probably was never going to live in again.
In history there are clear patterns that we actively choose to look away from, rather than engage. Our relationship with technology is one. [It has] a particular rhythm: one step forward, one step back. A help. A harm.
If there is something quintessentially modern it’s the idea that we are the authors of our own minds, the authors of our own reality. And what we create . . . is exciting precisely because it springs out of us and does not conform to something that is already there. The idea of novelty is a novelty.